What’s Donnie Darko All About? – Movie-A-Day: Donnie Darko

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mary McDonnell, Patrick Swayze, Drew Barrymore, James Duval, Jena Malone Director: Richard Kelly Year Of Release: 2001 Plot: It’s 1988, and the world of teenager Donnie Darko gets very strange when he sleepwalks out of bed one night and sees a vision of a giant bunny who tells him the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds. When he gets back home, he discovers he that if he hadn’t left his bed, he would have died as a jet engine has crashed through the roof of his house. This sets off a chain of events which seem to be connected to Donnie and everyone else now being in a tangent universe, with Donnie the one who has to sort it out and save the world.

The Move-A-Day Project is a series of articles based on a multiude of subjects inspired by a different film each day. To find out more about the project click here, or for the full list of previous articles and future movies we’ll be covering click here.

Donnie Darko is one of those films, like Shawshank Redemption, which has a lot to thank the UK for. When it was released in the US it was roundly ignored, grossing less than a million dollars during its entire theatrical run. However when it reached the UK is generated much more interest, and while it didn’t become a massive hit, it did get a lot of people talking, with the result that when it reached DVD in America, the distributor decided to give it a much bigger kick and the media were primed to start talking about it. As a result it became a bit of a home entertainment phenomenon, with millions of people trying to work out what on Earth it was all about, and whether there was actually any truly logical explanation.

Due to this cult success that could so easily never have happened, a couple of years later director Rickard Kelly put together a Director’s Cut, which helped to explain a lot more about what was going on (as did the audio commentary) in the film. It was certainly worthwhile as the original cut left out nearly all info Kelly had created, such as the text of the book The Philosophy of Time Travel, which helps make sense of his film. However many were still left confused – which isn’t surprising as even the best explanations leave plenty of questions open.

So what is it all about? Instead of writing down all the various possibilities, I thought I’d point you towards two great resources where you can find out all the info you need, and certainly a lot more than I’d have time to go into here.

The first is a website called www.donniedarko.org.uk. Not only does it have a full explanation of what’s probably going on (the main part I’d disagree with is the mention of God, as Kelly has talked about it being people from the future manipulating the past and helping to shut down the tangent universe), but also discusses alternative theories, as well as having the text of The Philosophy Of Time Travel, the full screenplay, and various other bits and pieces. It’s a great little site and worth exploring, even if only to see whether it agrees with your interpretation of the film.

The other thing I wanted to point you to is an online article called Everything you were afraid to ask about “Donnie Darko”, which also has a go at explaining the movie, and takes in various other mysteries, such as why they talk about Cellar Door being the most beautiful words in the English language and other nuances.

It’s all very interesting, although it’s difficult to escape the fact that like most films that set up a complicated series of events that goes by rules outside those we normally live by (particularly films involving time travel), when you think about it too hard, all you really start to see are the holes, and there are definitely quite a few in Donnie Darko. It’s rather like trying to trying to explain a David Lynch film. You can get so far, but the more you try to press logic onto it, the more it starts to unravel.

The films has a dream logic, set in a world that appears to have certain rules and which makes sense while you’re in it, but which suddenly becomes bizarre and nonsensical when you wake up. Indeed one of the explanations for Donnie Darko is that it’s all a dream, or at least a premonitory dream, which actually makes a fair amount of sense – indeed it’s been suggested that the montage at the end of the film was designed purely to stop people thinking it was all purely Donnie dreaming, as otherwise it would be the most logical explanation.

I’d actually be interested if anyone has any further explanations of what’s really happening in Donnie Darko, beyond those listed in the article and website above. The thing I’ve always been intrigued by is that most of the explanations rely of the idea that the book The Philosophy Of Time Travel is correct and its interpretation of tangent universes and how to sort them out is really what’s happening, but what if it’s wrong, and perhaps more particularly what if the there’s really something more malicious going on? After all, the characters who seem to offer the greatest explanations are a demonic looking six-foot tall rabbit called Frank and a woman known as Grandma Death (aka Roberta Sparrow), and we never actually learn anything that definitively says they’re amongst the good guys.

The film seems to suggest the tangent universe is an anomaly that just happens and that Frank and Roberta Sparrow are trying to help sort it out, because otherwise this strange alternate reality will destroy the real one. But it could be the opposite, if we assume they and The Philosophy Of Time Travel aren’t telling the truth.

One of the biggest problems with the film is that one of the main reasons a tangent universe collapses into a black hole (according to The Philosophy of Time Travel) is because objects from the primary universe (the jet engine), enter the tangent universe and need to be returned. However at the end of the film, Donnie doesn’t just return the engine to the primary universe, he returns it 28 days in the past, so it’s still an object that shouldn’t exist there (there are still two copies of the jet engine in that supposedly primary universe). It would seem therefore just as reasonable as assuming Donnie causes the tangent universe to collapse safely and saves the world, to say he’s been manipulated in the strange and mystical tangent universe to cause an event that could rupture the reality of the primary universe, by sending an object there that shouldn’t exist.

After all, if it’s a problem in the tangent universe, why isn’t it the same in the primary universe? Could Donnie’s journey really therefore not be about trying to save the world, but manipulating him to destroy it, by creating what is essentially a time loop that can’t exist?

Maybe I’m talking about of my ass (Kelly has provided extra info saying Donnie’s actions definitely didn’t destroy the world), but if you are interested in what’s really going on in Donnie Darko, it’s worth thinking about.

NOTE: Donnie Darko arrives on Blu-ray in the UK for the first time ever on July 19th, 2010.

TIM ISAAC

PREVIOUS: Domino – Why You Don’t Want To Be The Kid Of A Movie Star
NEXT: Don’t Come Knocking – The Top 5 Wim Wenders Movies

CLICK HERE to see the index of 909 films and TV shows the Movie-A-Day Project will be covering
CLICK HERE to find out more about the idea behind The Movie-A-Day Project
CLICK HERE to follow Movie_A_Day on Twitter